After GameDAILY BIZ reported that Texas law firm McKool Smith had sued 12 major game publishers for patent infringement, a PC hardware manufacturer informed us that 19 major PC manufacturing firms had also been sued by the McKool Smith firm, and virtually every smaller manufacturer threatened. HP, Dell, IBM, Toshiba, SCEA, Acer, MPC, Systemax, Fujitsu, Micro Electronics, Matsushita, Averatec, Polywell, Sharp, Twinhead, Uniwill, and JVC are all named as defendants in the suit.
The case brought against the 12 software publishers dealt solely with a single patent for a specific method of displaying 3D images on a screen. This suit brought against the 19 hardware manufacturers shows that McKool Smith's representatives own other patents that they hope to prove are being infringed upon.
In addition to the previously mentioned patent for displaying 3D images, McKool Smith contends that these manufacturers infringed upon the following patents:
- patent 4,730,185 entitled "Graphics Display Methods and Apparatus for Color Dithering"
- patent 5,132,670 entitled "System for Improving Two-Color Display Operations"
- patent 5,109,520 entitled "Image Frame Buffer Access Speedup By Providing Multiple Buffer Controls Each Containing Command FIFO Buffers"
- patent 4,742,474 entitled "Variable Access Frame Buffer Memory"
- patent 4,694,286 entitled "Apparatus and Method for Modifying Displayed Color Images"
- patent 4,761,642 entitled "System for Providing Data Communication Between a Computer Terminal and a Polarity of Concurrent Processes Running on a Multiple Process Computer"
All seven of these patents were issued in 1992 or earlier, to Tektronix, Inc. It appears that Tektronix sold these patents to McKool Smith, who has used them to bring suit against these 19 hardware manufacturers and the 12 software publishers, just months before the opportunity to do so was up. McKool Smith maintains that these companies are in violation because they assemble machines that enable the patented functionality.
Similar to most other patent suits, it appears that McKool Smith will try to get these companies to settle out of court by threatening a long drawn out legal battle which could very well cost the defendants more than a simple settlement would.
It's unclear what individuals specifically hold the rights to the patents in question, but it seems reasonable to speculate that it is the McKool Smith lawyers themselves. If that were the case it would only cost them their time, instead of legal fees. Essentially, they would have nothing to lose by bringing these suits.
McKool Smith lawyer T. Gordon White told GameDAILY BIZ that it is their policy to never discuss pending litigation.
One PC manufacturer told GameDAILY BIZ on a condition of anonymity "They are throwing these suits at anyone they possibly can. They're using the suits brought against the bigger companies to scare the smaller ones into settling. There's a big difference between 'right' and 'legally right,' unfortunately."
"The patents are a mixture of an extremely general, vague variety and of an incredibly dense and complex variety. Manufacturers would need to pay a patent lawyer a lot of money to decipher whether they're even in violation of the more complex ones or not. The bringer of this suit is very conscious of that," he continued.
The manufacturer reiterated what other sources have told GameDAILY BIZ: these lawsuits are indicative of fundamental flaws in the American patent and civil suit systems. "You could almost call this a legal version of mafia extortion. Because America doesn't have a 'losers pay' rule, these companies stand to lose more money fighting these suits than they would simply settling and giving McKool Smith a quarter for every system that they sell."
Florian Mueller, Campaign Manager of http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com told us, "John Carmack is a programming genius but he was squeezed by Creative because they at some point went to the patent office to register some general idea. Now there's that Texas law firm suing a long list of publishers. Where is this going to go? Is programming suddenly illegal?"
It is unknown if McKool Smith has brought suit against companies in other sectors of the gaming/computing industry, but given those already named as defendants, it seems likely.
GameDAILY BIZ will continue to monitor this story.
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